BILLINGS — You can see the towering cumulus clouds already starting to fire about toward the west of Billings. This is a good sign it's going to be a very active afternoon in south-central Montana.
Billings has mostly sunny skies and 76 degrees with some light rain in the area as of Tuesday afternoon.
Around the rest of the state, we are cooler out west into the 60s and low 70s. Back in the east, it's mid-to-upper 70s, even low 80s. A few low 90s around Sheridan and Worland are right around the corner.
We do have a severe thunderstorm watch for much of eastern Montana with a number of severe thunderstorm warnings already starting to fire up in that area.
The Doppler radar shows the big showers and thunderstorms are already starting to fire up around Bozeman all the way up towards Meagher County.
So far it looks like most of the storms are on track to either just barely clip Billings or go around heading toward Musselshell County.
We do have a large, enhanced risk of severe storms across much of eastern Montana, which is the highest level of severe thunderstorms we've reached so far this year.
This means we could see multiple severe thunderstorms in the central Montana. The showers and thunderstorms appear to be doing an end-run around the Billings area by 5 p.m.
As the storms move into the northeast corner of the state, they create more severe thunderstorms with large hail, high winds and heavy rainfall.
On Wednesday morning, all this moves up into Canada, and we’re left with mostly sunny skies across much of Montana.
On Tuesday night, south-central Montana will see temperatures cool back down to the 50s in most cases. And Wednesday, they'll get back up into the 70s and low 80s with mostly sunny skies.
We will top out at 78 degrees at 6 p.m., then cool back down into the 50s in the morning. Then up to 77 degrees about 2 p.m. Wednesday.
We will top out at 81 on Wednesday and work our way into the 90s over the weekend and back to 82 degrees on Monday.
BILLINGS FORECAST
TONIGHT: Mostly clear with a 30% chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms early in the evening. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Low 57 degrees.
WEDNESDAY: Mostly sunny and not as warm. West winds 5 to 15 mph. High 81 degrees.
THURSDAY: Mostly sunny and warmer. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph the morning shifting to the East in the afternoon. High 85 degrees.
